Weymouth trip 14th 15th 16th April

[Nick_lincoln]

My first trip report for YD so be gentle..................

There were 12 of us on the trip from various SAC's in Lincolnshire. We were with Scimitar Diving. A great new boat, large kitting up area, diver lift, lots of tea and biscuits. The skipper is handy with the shot too.

Dives:

St Dunstan
Landing craft and bombardon unit
HMS M2
Unknown dredger
HMS Sidon

St Dunstan
27m, 5m viz. A bucket dredger, you can still easily inspect the engines and boilers as well as the buckets and the gears that drove the dredging gear. Interestingly the engines are in the bow as the dredging gear is in the stern. One prop can be found still attached to the driveshaft and I am sure I saw a blade from a second one. Not a bad dive, but she's badly broken up in a few sections. 35 mins on EAN 32, no deco.

Landing craft & bombardon unit
A US landing craft for the Normandy landings. And an experimental wave breaking device. 12m max, less than 1m viz. Not a bad dive, spoiled by crap viz. The engines on the landing craft can be inspected as well as the remains of the bridge but the rest is just boring metal plating in a box shape. Off the stern a rope leads to the bombardon unit which looks like a huge 3D X, we squeezed through some tight bits in it then ascended having seen all we needed to see in 25 mins.

HMS M2
Stunning.................. she sits upright and looks almost completely intact. Conning tower is massive, hangar, lauch catapult and rails, bow torpedo tubes (x4), hydroplanes and stern all inspected. 5m viz, 32.5max depth. I was first to the hangar!! It is silted up halfway back but you can still get inside. The hangar doors and aircraft recovery gantry are gone. Did 35 minutes on M2 on EAN 32 and had 4 mins deco, as well as an 18m 2 minute deep stop as instructed by the Vytec DS IN 'DEEPSTOP' mode. I had a 3L cylinder of EAN 50 side slung for deco, swicthed to this at 12m and the reg flooded immediately, triggering a rapid swicth back to the twin set and another gas switch on the Vytec. A great dive, but it is a sad one also, as 60 bodies remain inside M2.

Unknown dredger
Boring really......... Looked like a scrapyard, one bit was bow shaped but thats it. Nice viz though as there was a sandy bottom - pity there was nothing worthwhile to see....................

HMS Sidon
We were on for the Aeolian Sky but another skipper reported the viz as crap so we went to do HMS Sidon, an S class submarine - where we got 1m viz and pitch darkness!! So a big improvement!! A great dive though. At 12m it was dark green, by 20m it was pitch black and depth to the sub was 27m with a max depth of 35m. This was a great pre-Clyde dive for me as my buddy said this is just what the Clyde is like for darkness. We explored the conning tower, bow torpedo tubes and hydroplanes, the snorkell system aft of the conning tower, the stern and hydroplanes and all off the outer shell which is intact. Did about 35 minutes on the Sidon on EAN 32, did a deepstop at 19m which cleared the 3 mins of deco we notched up, although we did 6mins at 6m anyway for safety.


In conclusion the good dives were so good that they made you forget the not so good ones. The group bonded well and there were no politics. I would recommend the HMS M2 and HMS Sidon to anyone..... brilliant dives. The St Dunstan makes a good second dive. Avoid 'unknown dredgers' or landing crafts etc unless you have a basic diving qualification. If you are a PADI OWD or BSAC ocean diver, these are perfect - any divers beyond these grades would find them boring - as we did.

Nick

[sexydivebuddy]

[Gizmo]

Top report Nick, this is all part of YD, sharing decent dive trips (and also the not so good ones) Many thanks for posting

Another glowing report for Scimitar Diving.